New York – A high ship from the Mexican Navy Fatal collision with The Brooklyn bridge highlighted on Saturday a danger that has worried sea people for almost 150 years.
Even before the construction of the bridge at the end of the 19th century, the Topmast of a US Navy ship. Uu.
But historians say that Saturday’s accident seems to be the first collision of boats with the bridge to lead the life of the crew members. Two Mexican naval cadets died and more were injured after Cuauhtémoc’s masts crashed into the bridge when dozens of sailors rose on top of the appearance as part of a public exhibition.
“That is the first and possibly in which there has been a fatality aboard a ship that hit the Brooklyn bridge,” said Dominique Jean-Louis, chief historian of the Brooklyn History Center, part of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Opened in 1883, the Brooklyn bridge covers the East River, connecting its homonymous county center to Manhattan. The highest point of the bottom of the bridge is listed at 135 feet (41.1 meters) on average above the water, but fluctuates with the tides.
During the construction, the owner of a warehouse sued state officials, first to stop the bridge and then by compensation, arguing that some ships still had the lowest that exceeded the height. The case did it to the United States Supreme Court, which dismissed the lawsuit, determining that the bridge did not improperly restrict the ship’s navigation.
Before that decision, however, at least one ship had already tangled up with the crossing still under construction.
According to an 1878 report in the New York Daily Tribune, the US Marine Vapor Training ship. UU. The USSAta Ussota headed towards the highest point of the bridge after planning in advance and lowering its asopar. But at the last minute, he had to change course to avoid an approximate ship, sending it to an area with less free space and hitting the bridge cables. No one was reported injured.
When the bridge was completed, the steamboats transported most of the lion’s assets, and high -level asta ships decreased in importance, said Richard Haw, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of Two books On the Brooklyn bridge.
“They go from sailing ships to steamboats,” said Haw. “You don’t need great authorization.”
However, the masts continued, including at least two reported in the 1920s, one of which was with the emblematic USS Seattle of the US Navy, which had “a small wood post that was too high,” said Jean-Louis.
In 1941, the SS Nyassa was taking hundreds of refugees to New York City when the captain missed the tide and part of his mast leaned in straight angle with the sub -analysis of the bridge, according to an article by the New York Times at the time he described a “crispy sound.” Among the refugees on board was Hedwig Ehrlich, a widow of the German Jewish scientist winner of Nobel Prize Paul Ehrlich, while he was going to live with daughters in San Francisco.
As the twentieth century advanced, the ships became higher and more wide. And still required appendages similar to masts for observation and communication.
A shipyard just north of the bridge, now known as the courtyard of the Brooklyn Navy, produced larger and larger ships during and after World War II, including the aircraft carriers that could barely fit under the bridge.
A 1961 photo shows the USS Constellation aircraft carrier leaving the assembly closet and passing under the Brooklyn bridge with a mast that was bent on the ship’s terrace, specially designed to go out to the port.
In the last two decades, at least three minor strikes have been reported against the lower part of the bridge or the base, including a crane lying by Barcaza in 2012, which broke into temporary scaffolding mounted under the bridge. A similar crane accident damaged the maintenance team of the peripheral bridge in July 2023, according to a report by the Coast Guard incident.
None of modern accident reports documents serious injuries.
But out of the water, the bridge has been a tragedy site long before Saturday’s accident. More than 20 people were killed and innumerable paralyzed while building it, including workers injured by decompression disease, an unwitting effect of working on water in sunk boxes to the river bed. Twelve people died in a stampery driven by panic among the crowds that visited the bridge shortly after it opened to the public in 1883.
